The STF (Federal Supreme Court) denied in a virtual plenary, on Friday (11.Nov.2022), requests from social networks to unblock media accounts of the left-wing acronym PCO (Partido da Causa Operária). The legend’s profiles and channels were blocked by Minister Alexandre de Moraes in June 2022.
The defenses of Twitter, Telegram, Tik Tok, Google (owner of YouTube) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) have filed appeals against Moraes’ decision. They question the measure and ask that the minister reconsider the decision and that the STF indicate the contents considered illegal so that the publications are excluded individually.
The virtual plenary started after the 2nd round of elections, on November 4, 2022, and ended on Friday (11.nov). In this modality, ministers include their votes in the STF system for a certain period.
Moraes, the investigation’s rapporteur, considered that the companies’ allegations did not indicate valid arguments to reconsider issues in his decision. “The appellant did not present any argument minimally able to deconstruct the obstacles pointed out. In this context, there is no repair to be made in the applied understanding”, I say minister in report. Here is the full text (74 KB).
The notes were considered by the other ministers, with the exception of Kássio Nunes Marques and André Mendonça. Both were appointed to the Supreme Court by the president. Jair Bolsonaro (PL), and have spoken out against blocking social media profiles.
The president of the Supreme Court, Minister Rosa Weber, followed Moraes’ vote. Despite having criticized the PCO’s attacks on institutions, she said that the “relevant” Theme of blocking profiles on social networks asks “further reflections and a more in-depth debate within the scope of this Supreme Court”.
“We take care of a sensitive issue involving points of friction between constitutional values, sometimes located on a collision course, which is not yet mature enough to receive, in this specific precautionary procedure, sometimes under electronic judgment, a definitive solution from this house”, said. Here’s the intact of Rosa Weber’s vote (74 KB).
Voting against the rapporteur’s decision, Kássio Nunes Marques said that social platforms serve as “instrument for preserving democracy and open dialogue” between the population and the parliamentarian🇧🇷 “Without this, we run the undesirable risk of distancing ourselves from freedom of expression and freedom of thought; values that must be protected by this Supreme Court.” stated. Here’s the intact of the vote of Nunes Marques (104 KB).
For Minister André Mendonça, who is also in favor of unblocking profiles, removing content from the internet needs a “specific annotation of each illegal content, case by case”🇧🇷 Here’s the intact of Mendonça’s vote (95 KB).
Here is the list of ministers who voted in favor of Moraes’ decision:
Here is the list of ministers who were against Moraes’ determination:
- minister Kássio Nunes Marques;
- Minister André Mendonça.
REMEMBER THE CASE
On June 2, the minister of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), Alexandre de Moraes, ordered the opening of an investigation against the PCO (Partido da Causa Operária) for publications of the acronym on the internet. Moraes ordered the caption’s profiles to be blocked on social networks. read the intact (133 KB).
The investigation opened by the minister is based on the inquiry of the fake news, which investigates the dissemination of false news against the Court. The order to block the accounts affects the party’s profiles on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, YouTube and TikTok.
The decision came after a publication on Twitter in which the left-wing party called the minister “toga skinhead” and says he’s in “Shady for Dictatorship”🇧🇷 The PCO also asked the “Dissolution of the Supreme Court”in a statement similar to that of right-wing groups, which appear in the Court’s inquiry.
In his decision, Moraes said that the PCO discloses several “publications of extreme gravity, through which it defends, without any restriction, the dissolution of the SUPREME COURT”🇧🇷 He also stated that the adoption of “measures capable of stopping the criminal practice, in addition to clarifying the investigated facts”🇧🇷
“Effectively, what is verified is the existence of strong indications that the party infrastructure of the PCO, a political party that receives public money, has been improperly and repeatedly used with the objective of enabling and promoting the propagation of criminal statements, through the official profiles of the party itself, published on its website”wrote the minister.
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